In my romantic relationships over the past five years or so, I’ve functioned mainly as a career secondary partner. I’m one of those poly people who is down on structure and labels, but that label best fits how I conduct my relationships. I generally don’t live with my partners, and they usually have someone else in their lives they consider to be a primary partner, who, in certain situations, is understood to get a higher priority than me. One problem with (gleefully) abandoning monogamy, though, is that once you’ve ditched the old script, you have to write your own. This invariably leads to misunderstanding, since you’re effectively having to start from scratch, and none of us are even remotely aware of how many built-in assumptions we have about “how things should be” until we run over them with the lawnmower. I’ve had a lot of dogshit on my mower blades recently due to this problem. Naturally communicating with partners directly is the best way to figure this stuff out, but sometimes that can be really hard when communication is getting distorted by various issues and patterns from the past. I really like this post on friend Franklin’s Xeromag on The Poly Secondary Bill of Rights. I’m in agreement with just about all of it, which is rare. It certainly gets to the root of several issues I’ve had recently, largely having to do with being included in life-changing decision that affect me and my relationship with my partner. Likely I will refer potential future partners to it as a good starting place for negotiation new relationships.